


The Girl in Lace and Denim

by DogEaredScribe



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Alchemy, Autistic Character, Developing Friendships, Dragons as humans, Gen, commission, hints of sexism, meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-06 19:52:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11607798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DogEaredScribe/pseuds/DogEaredScribe
Summary: Commissioned short story for LemeCrazy on Flight Rising of two of her characters.Shii is an alchemist tired of being underestimated and mocked behind her back for wearing cat ears.Qalphi is a girl who never talks, and yet still somehow manages to be the rudest, most frustrating customer that Shii has ever dealt with.Shii knows she is capable of brewing Qalphi's complecated order. The only question is if Shii can stand the girl hanging around her shop long enough to do it.





	1. Chapter 1

Everyone underestimated her at first. She was small, she was cute, she was young, she was _about to rip the head off the next person who talked to her like she was some kind of child._

And, okay, the cat ears probably didn’t help, but she loved those things and she wasn’t about to let people’s stupid misconceptions dictate how she dressed. As far as she was concerned, they could take their patronizing tones and freaky fantasies and shove them. She was the best damn alchemist west of the ruins and a couple of black and gold cat ears on a headband couldn’t change that. 

Everyone knew it, too, eventually. She took personal pleasure in proving just how good she was. Whenever a customer came on the trail of her reputation only to doubt her ability once they saw the person behind the stories, she got her revenge not in screwing them over, but by doing even better than they had expected. They came for a simple mediate tablet? They left with a prismatic one. Doubted she could even brew them up a residue familiar? Well, they’d better get used to seeing cat ears around, because they were leaving with a nekomata instead. She didn’t just meet their expectations, she exceeded them, and thus her reputation spread.

And yet somehow, even a year later, there were still those who came into her shop, took one look at her and started doubting her ability as though a couple of cat ears and a cute skirt somehow indicated alchemic ineptitude. There was no short supply of idiots in the world, it would seem, but she could manage. She always did before. Even if they were annoying, each sceptic was just another chance to prove herself, each insult an opportunity to turn their judgements around on them. She might get mad at first, but then, she would get _better_.

And so it went for the first year since she had opened her shop, her reputation growing, her clientele expanding, and not a single person managing to really get under her skin.

Until one day, when a girl slightly younger than herself walked right into her store, took one look at her ears, and meowed.

She actually, flat out _meowed_ , right in Shii’s face. And what was worse, she looked immensely pleased with herself after, a wide grin spreading on her lips as she leaned up on her hands on the counter, her eyes darting everywhere but on Shii herself.

For a moment, Shii forgot to be angry, she was so astounded. Sure, people had made comments before. She had caught them mocking her when she slipped away to the back room, putting their hands on their heads to mimick her ears and meowing back and forth with their friends. There were even those who liked to make comments, the kind that she could only respond to with blatant disgust. But this, this was almost worse.

“Ex _cuse_ me?” Shii wished her voice had been a little less shrill when she managed to find it, but there it was.

The girl, who was dressed in a denim jacket over a lace-trimmed dress and looked anything _but_ cruel, flicked her eyes to Shii’s headband again, then lifted her own hands to her head, cupped with her fingers all angled towards the center and even twitching slightly like a real cat’s ears would, and meowed again, pointedly. Then she smiled once more and, before Shii could recover enough to force out some kind of reply, dropped her hands and dug a crumpled bit of paper out of the pocket of her jacket, setting it in a wad on the counter.

Confused, Shii picked up the paper, rubbed it smooth on the edge of the counter, and read it. It was an order for a familiar, a slarg, with no preference for color and a promise of ten extra gems in payment if it could be brewed to be stench-free.

When Shii look up, the girl glanced at her face -- not her eyes, her mouth -- fleetingly, then leaned further forward on the counter, so eager she was bouncing on her toes, and gave a thumbs-up, to which Shii could only respond in kind.

The strange, rude girl was almost out the door before Shii remembered to tell her that it would take a week to brew.

Stench-free? Screw that! Shii would show her; she would make that slarg smell like a friggin’ flower garden!

\-----

The girl returned the next day. At first, Shii thought that she hadn’t heard her, but the girl just nodded when Shii reminded her that it would be another 6 days of brewing for it to be done, so she left it at that. She spent an hour just leaning on the counter as the girl browsed her shop, walking down every aisle a dozen times, fingers twisting in the cuffs of her sleeves or drumming rhythmically on her thighs as she did. After the fourth pass through, it was pretty clear she wasn’t going to buy anything.

“You know,” Shii finally said. “I can’t really finish your order if I can’t got back to my workshop and actually brew it.” She raised her brow pointedly.

The girl nodded, smiled, and circled the shop five more times before she left.

\----

She was back the next day. And the next. On the third day, Shii was thoroughly frustrated. Every time the girl came, she would stay for an hour or two, just looking about, occasionally poking or prodding an item with curious fingers -- luckily Shii kept the dangerous stuff behind glass for this very reason -- and for once Shii was actually _behind_ on her work.

Normally her customers were in and out. At most, they spent ten or fifteen minutes browsing, or choosing between two nearly-identical items. But most of the time, Shii was free to be in her workshop, actually getting her brewing done. With the daily and lengthy interruptions, Shii had fallen behind for the first time since she had opened the shop.

Even if there was a first for everything, that didn’t mean she had to like it.

So when the girl came in again, Shii threw down the hand towel she had been using to wipe green muck from her fingers and strode out in the main room. “If you’re going to keep coming here like this, I’m going to put you to work.”

She meant it like a threat, but the girl nodded at her with eager eyes and followed her back into the workshop to don an apron and pick up a spoon without a word of complaint.

Actually, had she ever spoken a single word at all?

Shii tried asking her a few questions -- what was her name, why did she like spending so much time there, who was the familiar for -- but the girl just smiled and stared over her shoulder and flipped her hands about in gestures that Shii couldn’t read, so eventually, Shii stopped asking, and soon found herself filling in the silence with her own story instead. She talked about her boyfriend, Takuya, and her brother and parents still living back in the tiny town she had left behind, about her old friends and old school, and even admitted that she had originally only majored in Alchemy because her brother thought she wouldn’t make it in what many still considered to be a _man’s field of work_. “I just wanted to be able to brew him up something little for a birthday gift, you know, to prove him wrong,” she said, “but by the end of the first semester, I was hooked. I loved it. Still do.”

And the girl smiled and nodded and seemed, somehow, to understand exactly what Shii meant. Not just the words, but the feeling, the emotion behind them.

The girl wasn’t skilled in alchemy at all. Shii hadn’t expected her to be. But pretty much anyone could at least handle a simple transmutation and having an extra pair of hands creating the ingredients while Shii spent her time working on the more complex art of actually putting them together into something useful sped up the process immensely, and by the time the girl seemed to decide it was time to leave, Shii was caught up in her work and then some.

\-----

When the girl arrived the next day, Shii was waiting for her with a name tag and a pen, which the girl took without question. Finally, Shii learned the name of the strange girl with the questing hands and darting eyes: Qalphi.

Over the next few days, Qalphi got better at transmuting, to the point that Shii’s shelves were overstocked and Shii had to convince her to sat aside her work the last day and simply watch. Qalphi perched, dressed in denim and lace as always under the plastic of her apron, and played with a pile of blue goo on her lap as she watched Shii finish the last adjustments, lower the temperature, and step back.

“There,” Shii said. “Ten minutes and it’ll be done.” The goop in the cauldron, slowly bubbling away, was turning a murky green just as expected, but unlike usual, it smelled of rosemary and pine and deep, dark forests. Shii moved around to stand next to Qalphi, a strange feeling welling up in her chest. Over the last week, she had learned a lot about Qalphi. That she didn’t like to be touched without warning, but loved to give deep, lingering hugs; that she sometimes made noises at other things, not words per se, but little chirps and hums that let Shii know what she was thinking; that her fingers could never keep still, always tapping or twisting or stroking patterns over the lace of her own clothing; that she hated onions but loved hot peppers and though she didn’t speak, she wrote in the most beautiful script that Shii had ever seen, a flowing, almost calligraphic style that took her seconds and ended up looking like the work of hours.

A soft gurgle stirred Shii from her thoughts. The cauldron was almost boiling over, would be if the liquid inside wasn’t so thick, and she hurried forward to snuff out the flame and dump the whole thing straight on the floor.

The mass of goo quivered a moment before it began to pull into itself, condensing and congealing until, finally, a muted green slarg was sitting there, looking up at them with wide amber eyes.

With a squeal of delight, Qalphi slid from the stool onto her knees and buried her hands wrist-deep in the minty slime covering the creature’s body.

\-----

The shop seemed quiet without Qalphi there. Shii wasn’t entirely sure how that worked. It wasn’t as though the girl made much noise in the first place; hell, she never spoke, though Shii now knew that was out of preference rather than an inability to do so. Shii has always talked to her familiars before, and still did, but it wasn’t the same; Qalphi might not have spoken back, but she _understood_ , and that was the important part.

In the week since the slarg had been finished, Qalphi hadn’t shown up once. Shii felt rather foolish that she had expected otherwise; clearly Qalphi had simply been killing time while she waited for her order to be filled, and was now back to whatever she did for a living.

Shii didn’t even know where the girl worked. How could she know so little about something and miss them so much?

And okay, Shii could admit it. She missed the girl. She couldn’t really put a name on why; she hadn’t known Qalphi long enough to consider her a friend, felt more for her like a little sister than any kind of crush. But she had become a comfortable constant and, once she had actually started to help rather than hinder, having her around had been good for business; now that she had spent half a week not having to do the transmutations herself, she realized just how much time she was wasting repeatedly turning items into ingredients. It was tedious work far below her skill level. Having an apprentice around had been useful, and it wasn’t like she couldn’t afford one with how well her shop was doing.

But she had no way to contact Qalphi. No phone number or address, no idea where she worked or even if she lived nearby; it was entirely possible that she had traveled from far away, and had stayed in a hotel while waiting for the brewing to be done. It would certainly explain why she had hung around as though she had nothing better to do.

But, whether it was Qalphi or not, having an apprentice was a good idea. So, after a few long days debating, Shii hung a help wanted sign on the window, and tried not to hope that Qalphi would see it.

In the end, she was right. A young man answered the ad, and Shii began training him. It wasn’t the same -- he answered her questions aloud rather than in writing, and wore gloves to avoid touching the ooze directly, was cautious about touching anything he wasn’t sure was safe, and hated spicy foods -- but he worked hard and, after a few months, Shii stopped thinking about the girl in lace and denim so often.

And then, one day in late summer, the smell of mint and deep woods accompanied the chime of the small bells that hung above the door, and when Shii looked up from the records book she had open on the counter, Qalphi was there, her slarg at her side, her hands lifted to her head, cupped and angled and twitching, and when she meowed, bright and earnest and so deeply, painfully hopeful, that Shii could only meow back and smile.


	2. Shii's Bio

There were words people used for her. Different words, depending on whether or not they liked her, but they all meant the same in the end. If they liked her, she was passionate; if they hated her, then she was overzealous. If they liked her, she was independant; if not, then she was defiant. She was either determined, or stubborn, either skilled or a show off, fiery or short tempered. But whatever else they said she was, Shii was one of the best damn alchemists to ever live. Whether they liked her or not, everyone agreed on that. 

Shii lived her life out of spite. She had been born premature, and the doctors had said she wouldn't make it, but she had. They told her that someone as sharp tongued and strong willed as her would never find a boyfriend, and now she had a fiance'. Her brother had been sure that being an alchemist was a man's job, so she took a class in Uni, just to prove him wrong. But what she had intended to turn into a simple little f-you gesture, a raised middle finger in the form of a Christmas gift she brewed herself just to show him she could, turned into a lifelong passion for alchemy, and she changed her major the next semester. 

After graduating, Shii apprenticed at a local shop and, when she was sure she was ready, moved across the country and opened her own shop in the city. 

At first, business was slow. People came to her shop, took one look at her, and dismissed her completely. They asked to see the shop's alchemist, and refused to believe she was it, insisting that she was nothing more that the cashier, the apprentice at most. But she worked hard, proved herself to every person who placed their order with her despite their reservations, and her reputation spread. She won a few competitions, became famous for being able to customize her creations to the buyer's preferences, and yet still, somehow, people would walk into her shop and doubt.

Shii didn't care. Let them believe what they wanted. Shii knew what she was capable, and eventually, everyone would. Each dismissal was a chance to prove herself, every reluctant buyer an opportunity to get better at her work. Shii would make her way in the world in spite of it all. In spite of the doubters and the sexists, the men who mocked her ears and the girls who mocked her height, the people who left her shop empty handed because the work or a cat eared girl wasn't good enough and those who left with their items, convinced that Shii was lying, that someone else had brewed it. Let them come, and let them doubt, because in time, Shii would prove them all wrong. Every last one.


	3. Qalphi's Bio

People are strange. And a little bit stupid.

Qalphi is four when she first thinks this. She is six when she is sure. People have this weird believe that a person is defined entirely by what they say aloud. Oh, they might not admit it, or even realize that's how they're thinking, but it is. What someone does might have some effect on other's views of them, but what they say is what really matters. Because if they do something cruel, but they apologize for it, then they're not cruel after all. If they say something kind, even if they later roll their eyes at their own words, then those people think they are kind.

In this way, Qalphi thinks that every person is not just one person, but many. They are the person who they are in public, and the one they are in private. They are who they are when talking to their boss, and to their friends, and to the server, and to their lover. The same person might be a kiss up to their boss, a joker to their friends, rude to their server and a gentleman to their lover. Trying to be all of these people at once must be exhausting. 

So Qalphi doesn't. She doesn't talk, but more importantly, she doesn't pretend. She expresses her thoughts without a filter, does what she wants even when society says she shouldn't. Sometimes she realizes it, sometimes she doesn't. People speak in circles and it makes her dizzy; sometimes they say something, and mean something else, and she just doesn't get that. Life would be so much less tiring if people just said what they wanted to say, or if, like Qalphi, they don't say anything at all. Qalphi prefers to write her thoughts down; after all, in the time it takes to put pen to paper, she can feel sure of what she's saying, and if she doesn't like it once it's written, then all she has to do is tear out the page and throw it away. Words, you can never really take those back. Once they're out, they're in the air forever. 

But people think she's strange for it. They use different words for it, diagnoses or insults, none of which Qalphi really cares about. What matters to her is that she can live her life as she wants to. So she gets a job where she doesn't need speech, buys an apartment with older neighbors who appreciate her silence, and orders a sweet smelling slarg for a companion from a girl who doesn't really say what she means, either, not at first, but who shows it plain in her eyes. 

In the end, Qalphi gains two companions, a slarg named Bo who can't quite manage to tell the signs for sit and lay down apart, but who tries her best, and a person who wears cat ears and talks enough for both of them. And Shii is strange, and Bo is a little bit stupid, but Qalphi is happy, and that's what matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> I am no longer on Flight Rising (at least for now; we'll see if that chances), but you can feel free to commission me for USD via Fiverr (username is DogEaredScribe there as well) or through email or on-site messaging. I'm also available for writing trades and round robins!


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